Keisha Benjamin, Thomas Rodgerson, Ph.D.

Rediscovering and Authenticating the Emerging Adult Spirit

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The general decline of the emerging adult population in the local Christian church community suggests a need for local churches to consider a means to become a community that values, cultivates, and empowers the expression of the emerging adult spirituality. Thus, the present research presents a framework for how local church communities may rediscover the emerging adult spirituality through the investment of time in understating their spiritual formation and expression. It further offers a means to aid local church communities to validate the expression of the emerging adult’s spirituality through the integration of their spiritual developmental needs into the fabric of the worship, teaching, and fellowship of the local church community. Through the use of a developing pastoral care method identified as libera8tion, the local church is implored to engage the emerging adult population by comforting, confirming, affirming, and commissioning them into partnership with God for the continued redemptive work of Christ for humanity. Considering the effects of post modernism on the development and perception of spirituality among emerging African American adults, the efficacy of the libera8tion method of care is examined in the life of New Hope African Methodist Episcopal Church as they prepare for outreach ministry to the emerging adult spirit.